


Blue Screen of Death

by yuletide_archivist



Category: Discworld - Terry Pratchett
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-12-25
Updated: 2007-12-25
Packaged: 2018-01-25 01:23:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,738
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1624106
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yuletide_archivist/pseuds/yuletide_archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Death must deal with a rather client who is rather. resilient.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Blue Screen of Death

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I do not own Discworld or any of its characters.   
>  Also, an infinite thanks to my fabulous and lightening-quick betas, Megalotro and Rosefox. You guys are amazing.
> 
> Written for Lina

 

 

Ponder Stibbons led a relatively peaceful, uneventful life at Unseen University's High Energy Magic Building. He worked quietly through the day, with students eagerly bustling about him, minding their own business. The building was warm and well-lit, and despite the occasional freak accidents of temporal-spatial meltdown, it was all in all a rather nice place to work.

Currently, Ponder was only visible as a pair of leather shoes, sticking out from under the University's great thinking machine, Hex. The machine had recently developed a few errors in its calculations which were, Ponder believed, a consequence of the unusually low temperatures in the building which had caused the death of a couple thousand ants. It was well known throughout the University - well, by those that knew of Hex, at least - that the great thinking machine couldn't run effectively without a sufficient number of bugs in its system.

Bravely undertaking the task of fixing it, Ponder had been tinkering with Hex's inner machinery for nearly six hours before he finally emerged from beneath it, covered in a thin layer of dust and looking rather pleased with himself.

"There!" He grinned, "All fixed."

WHAT WAS BROKEN?

"There seemed to be a crack in the compression tubing connecting the main interface with the auditory output funnel."

AND THAT'S BAD, IS IT?

"Oh, very bad. _Horrible_ , even. Can you imagine what would happen if unauthorized invertebrates got into the system?"

NO.

"Well, it would be a _horrible_ thing."

I SEE.

Ponder stood staring at the machine for some time, eyeing the blank sheet that made up the information output receptacle.1 Slowly, he felt his stomach shrink with dread as he realized that the person he had been speaking to had not, in fact, been speaking at all. He turned and looked at his visitor.

Death grinned at him.

Ponder was not at all comforted to realize that this was mainly because Death's head was actually a skull. He swallowed and cleared his throat.

"Oh, my," said Ponder, in a very small voice.

HELLO.

"Yes. Um. Hi." Ponder glanced desperately from side to side, and realized that he was now the only person in the High Energy Magic Building. Apparently the others had gone for lunch. Or run screaming, possibly.

"Is it-- I mean, am I--" Ponder swayed where he stood, unsure if he could speak the words.

DEAD? asked Death, in a voice as thick as lead. NO, I SHOULD THINK NOT. NOT YET, ANYWAY.

Ponder heaved his shoulders in a sigh of relief and paused before he could exhale.

" _Yet_?"

OH, WELL. Death shrugged. The movement made Ponder's ears rattle. EVERYONE'S GOT TO DIE SOMETIME, RIGHT? WELL, EXCEPT ME. HAHAHA.

"Hahaha." Ponder replied, weakly.

Death stood in the room, staring at Hex in quiet contemplation, while Ponder twisted his hands into his robe and shuffled his feet and sweated profusely as he thought furiously of how to escape the situation. There are few people in the world who enjoy the company of seven foot tall skeletons. Finally, thinking he would burst if he did not break the silence, Ponder turned to Death.

"So, um. Not to be rude, or anything." Ponder shifted nervously as Death turned to stare at him, "But why are you here?"

WHY AM I _HERE_?

"I mean, if I'm not dead. Or going to die. Um, soon, I mean. Unless I am. Which I hope I'm not." Ponder spoke hurriedly, "I mean, if you're not here to get me, because I'm not dead, yet, um, I hope, then, um, who are you here for?"

IT.

Death extended a bony finger and pointed at Hex. Ponder stared in wonder, and then turned back to Death, who was still looking at the machine with a puzzled look on his face. Or, more accurately, as puzzled as a skull can look - which, incidentally, isn't very much at all.

"Excuse me?" Ponder asked, looking back to Hex.

I HAVE COME TO COLLECT THIS... THIS... ANTHROPOMORPHIC THINKING DEVICE. ALTHOUGH IT'S GIVING ME SOME TROUBLE, TO BE HONEST.

"I--Uh, what?" Ponder was surprised, "You think Hex is _dead_?"

IS IT NOT?

"I don't know, I never thought it was really alive."

YOU TREATED IT AS A LIVING CREATURE, DID YOU NOT?

"I, uh." Ponder paused to scratch his head. Yes, the faculty of the Unseen University _had_ been surprised when it turned out that Hex ran itself quite effectively without human input. And as the years passed it had evolved rather on its own, adding bits and pieces as it pleased. The current Hex had largely built itself, and Ponder himself couldn't even name half the objects that were attached to it. And then there had been that _incident_ last Hogswatch, with the teddy bear.

"Um. Perhaps we _have_ sort of considered it to be a, uh, self-animated object." Ponder replied, looking up at Death nervously.

THERE YOU HAVE IT, THEN. IF SOMETHING IS ALIVE, IT MUST EVENTUALLY DIE.

"So you think Hex has died?"

Death pulled a large, extravagant life-timer. It was made of glass, and was cradled in pieces of tin and bits of string that looked inexpertly glued together. It smelt faintly of cheese. Even from a distance, Ponder could see that the top bulb was completely empty, and all the sparkling blue sand had filled the bottom.

"Does that mean Hex is dead?" Ponder asked, pointing to the empty bulb.

YES. NO. IN A WAY. Death sighed, and the sound echoed through Ponder's mind like the whispering of ghosts. WHEN A HUMAN DIES IT IS EASY, BECAUSE THE SANDS OF LIFE RUN EMPTY, AND I CAN EASILY SEVER THE SOUL FROM THE BODY\--

Ponder turned a slight shade of green.

\--BUT I DO NOT KNOW WHAT TO MAKE OF THIS 'HEX'. THERE IS NO MORE SAND, YET NO SOUL APPEARS FOR ME TO GUIDE. THERE IS NO LIFELINE TO SEVER FROM THE PHYSICAL BODY, YET IT POSSESSES INTELLIGENCE AND A PURPOSE OF ITS OWN. INEXPLICABLE.

"But why should Hex have, uh, died?" Ponder asked.

WHY NOT?

"I mean, there was nothing wrong with Hex before. The only problem was the leak in the compression tubing, which I just fixed. It should be just fine."

THEN WHY IS IT NOT WORKING?

"Oh! Well, I've got to turn it back on first."

TURN IT _BACK ON_? Death looked incredulous. Never in his existence had he encountered something that had truly died and come back to life again. Of course, monks routinely regenerated their souls by reincarnation, and vampires and werewolves certainly gave him a bloody time of it, when they kept almost dying and then coming back to life. And then there were opossums to deal with.

"Uh, yes. Using the GBL."

GBL?

"Yes. Technical term. Lots of fine details and complicated explanations."2

Death eyed Ponder Stibbons skeptically, although not, as it were, with actual eyes.

"Here, let me demonstrate," Ponder said. He walked around the other side of Hex and, turning to keep Death's prying gaze from discovering the simple truth, he flipped the big lever which would turn the paternoster and send thousands of tiny brigades of marching ants streaming from the main holding area3 into the tubes that connected Hex's processing centers.

Death watched as the machine flickered back to life, the millions of ants scurrying down their tunnels, turning this way and that in the intricate maze that was Hex's mechanical cortex. He heard the distant buzzing as the bees were released from their hives and made their way down separate tunnels, beginning the long process of storing data.

The water wheels began to spin and the clockwork sprang to the approximate hour. When the noise of the machine's startup had died back to a distant hum, Death watched in amazement as Hex's twitchy, erratic quill began to write.

"++?????++ Out of Cheese Error. Redo From Start."

And, above the rattle and hum of Hex's regular processing, was the faint, whining hiss of sand falling. Death turned to Ponder, and they both looked at the life-timer held in Death's bony hands. The top bulb had filled again with the glowing blue sand, and it was already falling gently.

Death turned to Ponder and then looked again at the bulb. He seemed at a loss for words.

"Um. So. Is Hex dead now?"

IT WOULD APPEAR NOT.

"So what are you going to do? I mean, Hex is alive again, right?"

NO, NOT 'AGAIN'. PERHAPS IT NEVER WAS ALIVE, OR WAS IN A STATE OF PSEUDO-ANIMATION. PERHAPS IT HAS NOT DIED BUT WAS MERELY HIBERNAT\--NO. PERHAPS... PERHAPS IT...

Death paused and looked at Ponder, who shrugged in defeat.

WELL. PERHAPS IT JUST _IS_.

"That seems rather fair to me." Ponder shifted nervously and looked at Death. He shuffled his shoes against the lime-green carpet of the room, and glanced around warily again. Finally, after watching Ponder squirm long enough, Death tucked the life-timer back in his robe.

I SUPPOSE I SHALL BE OFF, THEN.

"Yes, well. Busy night, and all."

YES.

"See you around, then."

Ponder froze in horror when he realized what he had said, and paled further when Death grinned at him.

YES.

  
Later, when the room was silent except for the distant hum of bees collecting data and the quiet whine of ants bustling about in glass tubing, Ponder sat down heavily on his chair. A moment later, he had almost forgotten about his visitor, and was already fussing over Hex's inexplicable +++Divide By Cucumber+++ error messages.

  


* * *

  
1\. Ponder Stibbons felt that everything involving Hex should have a grand and complicated name to accompany its grand and complicated purpose. Unfortunately he rarely knew what the objects that comprised Hex actually did, and frankly he wasn't very good at naming things. The thing he was looking at was, in fact, paper.  
2\. Ponder Stibbons, like all wizards everywhere, is loath to refer to something in simple, concise phrases. In order to sound properly wizard-like, things must be described by the longest, most obscure and ridiculous acronyms one can think of, preferably created to obtain the highest scores when used in Scrabble.  
3\. Or as Ponder referred to it, "the integral hymenopteric repository".

 


End file.
